run your morning bath in seafoam

From the moment Dilan could speak, she sang. Every word, every sentence—life was a melody to her, and she lived it like a song. Her parents dismissed it as a passing childhood phase, but for Dilan, it was a calling that never faded. Her father, a traditionalist and a formidable presence in her life, saw singing as a frivolous distraction. Singing was something to be indulged in youth, but abandoned in favor of marriage and duty. He expected her, like her sisters, to follow the path he laid out: university, marriage, motherhood. But Dilan was never meant to walk that path.

And she tried. She really did. She enrolled in university, hoping that maybe there was a way to balance her dreams with her father's expectations. But within a year, the walls of university felt more like a cage than a promise. When she dropped out, her father wasted no time organizing meetings with "eligible" Turkish bachelors, determined to mold her future through tradition and control. However, Dilan had reached her limit. Refusing to be bartered into a life she didn’t want, she finally did the unfathomable: she left.

With little more than her savings and a suitcase full of hope, Dilan drove to Los Angeles. There, in the vast and indifferent landscape of ambition, she chased her dream of singing. For a while, it was enough just to try. She busked on street corners, auditioned in dim clubs, and lived on coffee, borrowed time, and blind determination. She told herself it was better than the gilded cage waiting back home.

But LA was a hard place for a soft voice. Surrounded by thousands chasing the same dream, her talent was often overlooked and in the relentless hustle of the city, she began to believe what her father had always told her: that her beauty was her greatest asset. So, she leaned into it, using her looks to earn stage time, to get noticed, to try to carve out a space where her voice could be heard. But the promises she received were as empty as the clubs she sang in. Even the exchange of favors were hollow as she gave what every talent scout wanted: time behind closed doors. When it came to getting her return, they disappeared.

Milo Callaghan-Vaughn is a man built of love and ruin, thirty years old with a soul aged by grief, guilt, and a tenderness he doesn’t quite know where to place. He was born in the humming heart of New York City, raised in the arms of his single mother, Blair Vaughn, until the age of six. He was a bright eyed boy clinging to the warmth of a woman who carried too many unspoken things. Then, one day, she packed their lives into a suitcase and carried him across the country to Vegas, chasing the truth she could no longer hide: his father Fionn Callaghan

Despite Blair still being in love with Fionn, the three formed an unconventional family bound by loyalty and history. For ten formative years, Milo grew up in a home full of contradictions: love, tension, and secrets. When he was sixteen, everything shattered. Fionn was arrested for a crime he committed years before. Though guilty, his father’s case was mishandled, and a conviction tore their family apart.

He carried that loss like a torch. At twenty, he met Andromeda "Andy" Lynch, fierce and fragile in the same breath, while both were visiting fathers behind prison walls. They fell in love like a storm: sudden and reckless but all consuming. By twenty-two, they were married, much to the disbelief of everyone they knew. Milo refused the comfort of her family’s money. All he wanted was enough to buy his father a second chance, so they stole time, trust, and small fortunes. The pair were a modern day Bonnie and Clyde with aching hearts and noble intentions.

But fate seems to have its own way. A car crash, Milo behind the wheel landed them in a hospital room basking in sterile light. Andy was pregnant. And then she wasn’t. The silence that followed was louder than any fight. At twenty six, with grief threatening to hollow him out, Milo suggested escape. A road trip. Something to give them a new start.

They landed in Magnolia, Arizona, a town too small to hide in, too still to ignore your own thoughts. Milo thought they were healing, but Andy handed him divorce papers like a quiet goodbye, and he signed them, despite everything in him telling him not to. Was it just the miscarriage that led them to this or was there more he never saw?

Four years later, Milo still calls Magnolia home. He is now the head chef at Noir, a dream once too distant to name. He folds his passion into plates and pours his ache into the flames. His hands know how to make beautiful things. But his heart? Still tangled in the woman who lives just across town, the woman he never truly stopped loving.